Monthly Archives: July 2005

I’m in Tampa Bay at the nicest resort I’ve ever seen. 800 acres, 4 – 18 hole PGA golf courses, 7 olympic size swimming pools, a transportation system that will take you anywhere on the grounds is at your beckon call….on and on and on.

I order a few cans of soda and when the guy gets to my room and shows me the bill…..$63!!!! for 6 cans of pop!!! They are out of their MINDS!!!!

I must say that I have THOUROUGHLY enjoyed being home for the past week. It’s a shame I have to get back on a plane in a couple of days. Three more weeks on the road and then another week off.

I interviewed with a couple of companies and one of them appears to be very interested. One of the others is taking a while to get back to me. One of them is also asking me to relocate….that would be hard.

I had a two day consult with ETS at Princeton University. I was to fly into Newark (EWR) arriving at 2am, drive to Princeton (1 hr drive), and make a 7:30am meeting.

On the plane, the captain announces: "Ladies and gentlemen, we have been notified that there is some hydraulic fluid on the ground near engine one. We are trying to determine if it’s us or if it was another plane." 5 minutes later, he announces, "Ladies and gentlemen, it appears that the fluid is indeed coming from our engine. We have mechanics working on the issue and we estimate an hour delay." Great, now I’ll get there at 4am.

10 minutes later, the captain announces, "Ladies and gentlemen, it appears that the problem is more serious than we previously thought. Our air conditioning unit is not working either and we will need to de-plane everyone as it will get very hot in here shortly. Please check back at the gate every 15 minutes to get status on this flight. Thank you." They announced another plane leaving in 2 hours. So—I’d get there at 6am. This ain’t happenin’…

I can’t call my client because it’s already past 9:30pm to let them know that I won’t be coming and when to re-schedule…this STINKS!!

Probably better this way….I’d hate to be on the first America West flight that crashes…..

Second session, I’m feeling pretty confident after rocking the house and being in the Top Ten on the first day. I test my demo one more time *JUST TO MAKE SURE* it’s working. Power supply blows up. No prob, got a backup. Hard drive fails. No prob, got a backup. VPC image isn’t there. No prob, got a backup on DVD. Start to copy it over….CRC error….OK, now I’m nervous. Mhy whole presentation hinges on this demo. I’ve got 23 minutes.

I began a build of a vhd that has W2K3 and SPS. Slow as molasses in January. I tell the audience that I will do the demo a the end of my slideshow….the slide machine BSODs. I call the crew guy down…he gets on stage with me and tries to reboot the machine. It won’t. He calls another person to come down and help. Now there are three people on stage, me and two show crew people. One is underneath yanking cable and the other is trying to find where the outlet is. I figure at this point I’m dead anyway and ask if anyone has any questions….??????

Here are some of the comments in my eval:

"The disaster recovery lesson that became a disaster itself. 😉 The funniest session in TechEd forever! I’m really feeling sorry for the guy having to have a lesson while all of his demos were totally messed up. However, the performance was really nice standup comedy and although we didn’t learn anything about the issue itself at least we had fun."

"it was actually the most funny session I attended, although the demo didnt work."

"10/10 – never seen a presenter recover from a complete equipment meltdown in such a professional way!!"

I did my first ever TechEd presentation yesterday. It was on how to have a successful SharePoint Portal server implementation. Basically on the pitfalls of designing a SharePoint infrastructure. While I didn’t get high marks for the level of technical content, I rated consistently (every time except one) above my track (portals) and I ranked in the top ten highest evaluations! WOO HOO!!

Today the competition will be a little tougher with presenters like Brian Komar, Steve Riley, etc. especially since they are doing Security stuff, which is always a big draw and the presenters are generally on their ‘A’ game.

OK, so I thought that DFW sucked because they had no electrical outlets. I get to Cincy on my way to Amsterdam and discover that Cincy has just as few outlets and to add insult to injury, they CHARGE you for using them!!!

So here I am in the lobby of my hotel waiting for my room to get ready. At first they had a smoking room, but that ain’t flyin with me. THEN they wanted to charge me an extra €70 ($105) PER NIGHT to get a room *now*, or wait 3 hours and get a non smoking for the original price. If the Euro is doing so well…why do they want so many of my DOLLARS…??? Europe is freaking EXPENSIVE!!!

The flight was nice. I flew first class and was amazed at the difference of service. I may never fly coach again…really.